Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology

2015, Vol. 35, No. 2, 103116

2015 American Psychological Association

1068-8471/15/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0038960

Neoliberalism and Psychological Ethics

Jeff Sugarman

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Simon Fraser University

This article draws attention to the relationship between neoliberalism and psychology.
Features of this relationship can be seen with reference to recent studies linking
psychology to neoliberalism through the constitution of a kind of subjectivity susceptible to neoliberal governmentality. Three examples are presented that reveal the ways
in which psychologists are implicated in the neoliberal agenda: psychologists conception and treatment of social anxiety disorder, positive psychology, and educational
psychology. It is hoped that presenting and discussing these cases broadens the context
of consideration in which psychological ethics might be examined and more richly
informed. It is concluded that only by interrogating neoliberalism, psychologists
relationship to it, how it affects what persons are and might become, and whether it is
good for human well-being can we understand the ethics of psychological disciplinary
and professional practices in the context of a neoliberal political order and if we are
living up to our social responsibility.
Keywords: character, coaching, educational psychology, enterprise, entrepreneur, ethics,
governmentality, neoliberalism, positive psychology, social anxiety disorder

I want to raise a question: What is an ethics of

psychology when interpreted in the context of a
neoliberal political order? In what follows, my
intention is not to answer the question, but
rather to broaden the context of consideration.
What I suggest need be included are contemporary sociopolitical and economic matters highly
consequential for human individual and collective conduct but that appear to have been ignored in discussions of psychological ethical
principles and practices. I will begin by describing neoliberalism. Neoliberalism has proliferated rapidly throughout the globe (Davies &
Bansel, 2007). Yet it is hard to nd someone
who admits to being a neoliberal. Neoliberalism
has managed to make itself invisible by becoming common sense. I then turn to its effects seen
in the kinds of persons we are becoming

This article was published Online First March 2, 2015.

I thank Thomas Teo, Jack Martin, Lucy Lemare, and Julia
Yazvenko for their comments and suggestions. A draft of
this article was presented at the Annual Convention of the
Canadian Psychological Association, Vancouver, BC, Canada (June, 2014).
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jeff Sugarman, Faculty of Education, Simon
Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, Canada,
V5A 1S6. E-mail: sugarman@sfu.ca

effects that, in Sennetts (1998) words, corrode

character and the loyalty and commitment by
which it is accomplished. Following, I will reveal something of psychologys complicity in
promoting these effects.
Interwoven through these strands of my discussion are two implications. First, psychologists need to be ideologically aware if they are
to comprehend their disciplinary and professional practices ethically. Second, equipped
with such awareness, it is plain that psychologists are contributing to an ideological climate
in which persons are not obliged to consider, let
alone take responsibility for, the welfare of others. To allege this contravenes Principle B of
the American Psychological Associations Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of
Conduct (American Psychological Association,
2010), Principle IV of the Canadian Code of
Ethics for Psychologists (Canadian Psychological Association, 2008), and Principle 3 of the
British Psychological Societys Code of Ethics
and Conduct (British Psychological Society,
2009), all of which pertain to psychologists
responsibility to society, is to belittle the point.
Introduction to Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism marks the overthrow of
Keynesian welfare state economics by the Chi-

103

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104

SUGARMAN

cago School of political economy in the closing

decades of the 20th century (Harvey, 2005; Palley,
2005). Its key features are a radically free market
in which competition is maximized, free trade
achieved through economic deregulation, privatization of public assets, vastly diminished state
responsibility over areas of social welfare, the
corporatization of human services, and monetary
and social policies congenial to corporations and
disregardful of the consequences: poverty, rapid
depletion of resources, irreparable damage to the
biosphere, destruction of cultures, and erosion of
liberal democratic institutions (Brown, 2003).
However, the reach of neoliberalism is even more
extensive. Neoliberalism is reformulating personhood, psychological life, moral and ethical responsibility, and what it means to have selfhood
and identity. Neoliberalism is now, and should be,
of great concern. Although there was but a sprinkling of social science publications referencing
neoliberalism in the 1980s, there has been a profusion of interest over the past decade (Boas &
Gans-Morse, 2009). Nevertheless, although there
is great attention to neoliberalism among scholars
in disciplines such as sociology and economics,
there is comparatively little discussion of neoliberalism and its consequences among psychologists.
The neoliberal turn was revealed by Michel
Foucault in a series of lectures given over the
1978 1979 term as Chair of the History of
Systems of Thought at the Collge de France, a
position he held from 1970 to 1984. Each of his
lectures during this period is available in print.
The course of 1978 1979, misleadingly entitled
The Birth of Biopolitics (Foucault, 2008), is
remarkable. It is remarkable because of its surpassing prescience; misleading because the central subject is not biopolitics, but rather, neoliberalism. Part of the mandate of the College de
France is that lectures follow in step with the
progress of research the professor is conducting
that year. Half way through the term, Foucault
switched his attention to political philosophy.
Foucault discovered a connection between neoliberal styles of government and subjectivity. By
government or governmentality, his invented
term, Foucault meant broadly, features and functions of sociopolitical institutions that shape and
regulate the attitudes and conduct of individuals.
Governmentality links political power to subjectivity. Foucault drew attention to the governmentality at work in neoliberal political structures

emerging in the 1970s and rmly in place by the

1980s in the United States and United Kingdom.
He saw enterprise as a form and function of
governmentality that was becoming generalized
beyond neoliberal sociopolitical institutions to all
corners of human action and experience, including
the shaping of individual life.
In neoliberalism, the technologies of the market work as mechanisms through which persons
are constituted as free, enterprising individuals
who govern themselves and, consequently, require only limited direct control by the state.
The idea of enterprise pertains not only to an
emphasis on economic enterprise over other
forms of institutional organization, but also, on
personal attributes aligned with enterprise culture, such as initiative, self-reliance, selfmastery, and risk taking. According to Foucault,
the language of enterprise articulates a new
relation between the economic well being of the
state and individual fulllment. This relation
consists in the premises that the economy is
optimized through the entrepreneurial activity
of autonomous individuals and that human
wellbeing is furthered if individuals are free to
direct their lives as entrepreneurs.
It is important to distinguish neoliberalism from
classical liberalism. In classical liberalism, people
owned themselves as though they were property
and could sell their capacities for labor in the
market. By contrast, in neoliberalism, people own
themselves as if they are entrepreneurs of a business. They conceive of themselves as a set of
assetsskills and attributesto be managed,
maintained, developed, and treated as ventures in
which to invest. As enterprising subjects, we think
of ourselves as individuals who establish and add
value to ourselves through personal investment (in
education or insurance), who administer ourselves
as an economic interest with vocabularies of management and performativity (satisfaction, worth,
productivity, initiative, effectiveness, skills, goals,
risk, networking, and so forth), who invest in our
aspirations by adopting expert advice (of psychotherapists, personal trainers, dieticians, life
coaches, nancial planners, genetic counselors),
and who maximize and express our autonomy
through choice (mostly in consumerism). However, the major distinction between classical and
neoliberalism is that in neoliberalism, individuals
not only are obliged to be engaged in economic
activity, they are expected to create it.

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NEOLIBERALISM

In neoliberalism, governing occurs by providing individuals with choices and holding

them accountable for the choices they make.
However, many of the life choices with which
individuals are now faced are the result of reduced government services that, in effect, transfers risk from the state to individuals. Risk and
uncertainty are nothing new. But, in the climate
of neoliberal economics, there is less and less
separating those who pursue risk intentionally
for prot, from the rest of us for whom it is
being woven ideologically into the fabric of
everyday life, whether it is matters of personal
health, the care and education of our children,
the increasing unpredictability of employment,
or dignity in old age. Along with increased risk,
the current emphasis on choice, autonomy, and
self-reliance insinuates failure as self-failure, for
which one is expected to bear sole responsibility.
There is diminishing appreciation that individuals
predicaments are a product of more than simply
their individual choice, and include access to opportunities, how opportunities are made available,
the capacity to take advantage of opportunities
offered, and a host of factors regarding personal
histories and the exigencies of lives.
Another feature of choice in neoliberal governmentality is that despite endless proliferation of
matters over which choice can be exercised and
options available, many of our choices are precongured to preclude more fundamental choices. For
example, there is an enormous variety of credit
cards from which one may choose. However, possessing a credit card is not subject to choice if one
wishes to purchase an airline ticket, make hotel
reservations, or rent a car. In neoliberal societies,
choosing not to possess a credit card, own a bank
account, use computer technology, compete for
employment, or choosing not to choose, imposes severe limitations.
The idea of choice is connected intimately to
our understanding of ourselves as free, autonomous actors, capable of choosing rationally and
responsibly in ways that will bring about our selfchosen ends. We have become enraptured by the
idea that more choice means more individual freedom and anything that enhances individualism is
good. These days, it is hard to see how our choices
are determined by anything other than our own
self-initiated desires and deliberations. However,
we always are embedded in practices that are
mutually constitutive and so much a part of the
warp and woof of daily life as to render them

105

imperceptible. The extent to which enterprising

subjects understand themselves as free in this way
is seen as inherent in human nature, normal, natural, vital, even virtuous, and common sense and
the apparatus of neoliberal governmentality remain concealed.
Foucault argued that neoliberal governmentality harnesses individual choice and freedom as a
form of power. It operates, not through coercion,
but rather, inconspicuously through social practices that create a eld of action within which
persons are recongured through an economized
conception of enterprise and by acting on them
through their capacity for agency and selfdetermination. But neoliberalism is not just something outside of us. In fact, it is dramatically
diminishing and, in some cases, erasing traditionally strong boundaries between private and personal versus public and social. As Hamann (2009)
observes, this shift is evident in increasing corporate and government surveillance (e.g., monitoring
of electronic communications) and the commodication and purveying of detailed personal information for commercial and administrative ends.
The shift also can be seen in how activities of
production and consumption, once carried out in
public spaces have now inltrated the home, a
space previously reserved for leisure and housework. Telecommuting, telemarketing, and Internet
shopping are found increasingly in homes. As
Hamann states:
Nearly ubiquitous technologies such as the telephone,
home computers with worldwide web access, pagers,
mobile phones, GPS and other wireless devices have
rendered private space and personal time accessible to
the demands of business and, increasingly, the interests
of government. To put it simply, it is no longer true, as
Marx once claimed, that the worker is at home when
he is not working, and when he is working he is not at
home. (p. 39)

The Corrosion of Character

The language and practices of neoliberalism
are revising how, as self-interpreting beings, we
see ourselves and others, inevitably transforming what we are. I want to turn to the claim that
neoliberalism is corroding character. Before the
late 20th century, a job furnished not only security, but also an identity and an orientation to
living. The original meaning of the word, career, was a carriage road and, as it came to be
applied to vocations, a clear way aheada prepared path. This no longer is the case. Career

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106

SUGARMAN

counseling clients are now told to expect 11 job

changes over their working lives (Sennett,
1998). The neoliberal context of employment is
perpetually transitional. It demands and exploits
a workforce that is global, disembedded, mobile, and exible. In many sectors, lifelong vocations are being replaced by job portfolios
composed of short-term projects and contracts.
Sennett (1998) argues that this shift can be
traced to a change in the tactics of big money
from owning companies to trading in them. The
result was not only how companies were seen
and managed, but also how workers were seen
and managed. The strategies of short term investment and companies becoming more exible, capable of retooling quickly to take advantage of ongoing and rapid changes in consumer
demand, were translated and imposed on the
labor force. In the new regimewhat Sennett
calls exible capitalismworkers are asked
to behave nimbly, to be open to change on short
notice, [and] to take risks continually (p. 9).
They are expected to be good at multiskilling
(which often amounts to responsibility for what
were three employees jobs prior to downsizing)
and to embrace extime (which frequently
translates as working more than 40 hours per
week and being constantly at the employers
beck and call), reengineering, de-layering,
teamwork, constant performance appraisals (enabled by information technology that instantaneously collects data on employees activities),
and ongoing change in working conditions. Proponents claim that the new emphasis on exibility provides workers greater freedom with
which to fashion their lives and more opportunities for personal fulllment. But, as Sennett
deciphers, the new regime simply replaces old
controls with new ones.
According to Sennett (1998), the social and
psychological costs of these changes are profound. We now live in a contracting society.
Traditional values are undermined as we rely
increasingly on the authority of legalistic contracts and less on trust, promises, and long-term
covenants, such as those that once existed between employers and employees. In a context of
work built on short-term contracts, exibility,
and mobility, it becomes difcult to preserve
the value and viability of long-term commitments and relationships. A society of individuals frequently switching jobs, relocating, and
preoccupied with personal risk and self-interest,

is conducive neither to stable families nor cohesive communities.

Sennett (1998) postulates that over most of
history there has been little confusion about the
meaning of character. Character refers to the
enduring personal characteristics we value in
ourselves and for which we want to be valued
by others (p. 10). Character is social and long
term. It nds expression in loyalty and mutual
commitment, and in the sustained pursuit of
goals over time. But, as Sennett asks,
How do we decide what is of lasting value in ourselves
in a society which is impatient, which focuses on the
immediate moment? How can long-term goals be pursued in an economy devoted to the short-term? How
can mutual loyalties and commitments be sustained in
institutions which are constantly breaking apart or continually being redesigned? (p. 10)

Sennetts questions have profound psychological implications. Character unfolds through

the coherence of our lived experience of time
and space. But, as Sennett (1998) observes, a
hazard of exible capitalism is experience that
drifts in time, from place to place, job to job,
and contract to contract. In lives composed of
fragments, episodes, instrumental values, and
where career is no longer a meaningful concept,
how does one make and maintain the long-term
commitments required of people to form their
characters into sustained narratives? Life narratives are not merely registers of events. They
bestow temporal logic and coherence ordering the progress of life in time, furnishing hindsight, foresight, and insight, rendering explanations for why things happen, and providing for
the integrity of self and identity (Freeman,
2010).
Orbach (2001) contends that the life narratives of neoliberal selves are fragmented and
more resemble a checklist of capacities than a
coherent life story. Such checklists, Orbach believes, are not psychologically nourishing and
are inadequate for a deeply meaningful experience of self and identity. Orbach also suggests
that the convenient corporate solution to the
neoliberal fragmenting of time, loss of place,
and overwhelming sense of personal insignicance is branding. The buying and wearing of
brands has become our way to belong, nd our
place, and lend coherence to our identities. Our
personal commitments, identications, and orientations are dened not through discovering
and defending communal values and civic vir-

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NEOLIBERALISM

tues, but instead, by sporting Nike, drinking

Starbucks, buying iPhones, and driving BMWs.
However, the practice of branding is no longer limited to commodities. Personal branding
has been promoted widely since Tom Peters,
1997 article, The Brand Called You, appeared
in Fast Company magazine. Peters encourages
us to think of ourselves every bit as much of a
brand as Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop
(section 2, para. 3). Peters asserts that everyone
has the facility to make themself stand out and
attract opportunities. But to do so, he counsels,
we must envision ourselves as CEOs of our
own companies: Me Inc. and to recognize that
our most important job is to be head marketer
for the brand called You (section 1, para. 4).
Successful personal branding, Peters expounds,
demands relentless devotion to developing your
value as a brand: to act selshlyto grow
yourself, to promote yourself, to get the market
to reward yourself (section 5, para. 4).
In contrast to Sennett (1998); Peters (1997)
sees the project-based world as the ideal work
milieu, especially for growing ones personal
brand, and he disputes that loyalty and commitment are in decline. Instead, Peters remonstrates, the mindless loyalty workers once
gave to companies is being replaced by a
deeper sense of loyalty to ones projects and
oneself (section 5, para. 3). One might ask,
however, in what such depth consists. Personal
branding supplants character, recasting in entrepreneurial terms the values by which we dene,
characterize, and orient ourselves.
Psychologists extensive participation in
branding and advertising provides ample illustration of collusion with neoliberal governmentality. However, I wish to focus on three other
examples that evince psychologists complicity
in the neoliberal agenda: social anxiety, positive
psychology, and educational psychology.
Neoliberalism and Social Anxiety
Social anxiety is now the third most common
psychological disorder after depression and alcoholism, affecting more than 13% of the population (Horwitz, 2002) and deemed a public
health danger . . . heading toward epidemic
proportions (Henderson & Zimbardo, 2008,
shyness and technology section, para. 5). The
rapid rise in social anxiety disorder is striking
given it did not become a diagnostic category

107

until 1987 and its precursor, social phobia, was

uncommon, found in less than 3% of the population (Aho, 2010). Hickinbottom-Brawn
(2013) accounts for the rapid growth and prevalence of social anxiety as a psychological disorder, its relationship to what we previously
called shyness, how enterprise culture shaped a
space of possibility in which social anxiety became an object of expert psychological knowledge and intervention, and the ways psychology
and other institutions are contributing to its
spread.
Hickinbottom-Brawn (2013) identies two
important sources that brought heightened attention to social anxiety. One is the specic role
played by SmithKline Beecham, makers of the
pharmaceutical Paxil, the preferred treatment. A
timely removal of advertising restrictions permitted the company to market the drug directly
to consumers. What is more signicant, is that
the companys multibillion dollar marketing
campaign was highly effective in linking the
disorder to all manner of interpersonal and jobrelated problems in a way that refashioned all
social discomfort as dis-ease. According to
SmithKline Beecham, the campaign was warranted because patients with social anxiety disorder often share the common public misperception that what they experience is severe
shyness (Lane, 2007, p. 122). In the words of
the product director of Paxil, Barry Brand, Every marketers dream . . . is to nd an unidentied or unknown market and develop it. Thats
what we were able to do with social anxiety
disorder (Goetzl, 2000, para. 3).
The second source of attention, on which the
rst depended, is an enterprise culture that
places a premium on social prowess, condence, exuberance, and initiative characteristics needed for effective networking and selfpresentation that, in turn, are believed necessary
for success in a competitive marketplace. Given
such a setting, it is easy to see how shyness and
social discomfort can be made to stand out as
problematic. As Hickinbottom-Brawn (2013)
observes, on the one hand, the importance of
networking, self-presentation, and belief in the
ever-present potential of opportunities and required vigilance in maintaining the kind of personal image that attracts them, demands relentless self-monitoring. But, on the other hand,
such anxious self-surveillance signals maladjustment. In Hickinbottom-Brawns words: in

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108

SUGARMAN

the workplace of enterprise culture, anxious

self-surveillance is both pathological and prescribed (p. 740). Social anxiety as both vice
and virtue is part of what contributes to its
prevalence.
According to Hickinbottom-Brawn (2013), a
diagnosis of social anxiety disorder may help
those aficted with an explanation for why they
are experiencing suffering and difculty. However, by pathologizing and medicalizing shyness, and locating the source of the problem
within individuals, psychologists operate behind a veil of science and value neutrality.
Ideological complicity is rarely addressed.
Hickinbottom-Brawn discusses how cognitive behavioral therapy, the second most
common form of treatment and which
typically is administered by psychologists, is
conducted without due attention to its sociopolitical implications. Although cognitive
behavioral therapy is said to be grounded in
collaboration and democratic values, the therapeutic context is structured such that the
therapist is the authoritative expert who conducts sessions with rigorous supervision, instructing clients how to interpret their experiences while teaching them techniques of
self-control (Proctor, 2008). The aim of therapy is the transfer of control by which
clients are gradually directed to manage
themselves. However, it is recommended that
therapists act paternally and client compliance is considered the single most important
factor for therapeutic efcacy. Compliance is
hardly collaboration.
The assumptions perpetrated by psychologists are that social anxiety is a pathological
disorder internal to individuals, individuals bear
sole responsibility for their condition, and expert treatment is required for ameliorating the
disorder. Such expert treatment consists in
methods of self-surveillance and self-managementmethods, Hickinbottom-Brawn (2013)
alleges, that encourage conformity to neoliberal
ideals and may in fact exacerbate rather than
alleviate clients difculties. Never are the predicaments, contradictions, and risks wrought by
the institutions of neoliberalism in which individuals are compelled to participate and made to
live out their everyday lives, considered. In this
light, it is not unreasonable to conjecture that
psychologists are perpetuating the disorder,
even if unwittingly. This criticism can be ex-

tended to much contemporary psychotherapy

(cf. Cushman, 1995).
As remarked by Hickinbottom-Brawn
(2013), social anxiety may be a highly individual and private experience. However, it does not
follow that the origins or causes of such experience are located within individuals. Hickinbottom-Brawn submits that the conception of
social anxiety as an individual disorder deters us
from looking at the broader sociopolitical context in which it is manifest, where previous
ideals of citizenship and commitment to others
have been supplanted by a vision of social relations as a matter of interaction between economic units for the purpose of personal fulllment and attainment of instrumental ends (p.
746). Hickinbottom-Brawn asserts that in their
conceptualization and treatment of social anxiety, psychologists thus promote an instrumental
orientation to social and personal life, contribute to naturalizing and normalizing neoliberalism, and maintain the neoliberal status quo.
Neoliberalism and Positive Psychology
Whatever other ideologies may have been
implicit in psychotherapies popular during the
1970s and 1980s, they were aligned with the
emerging neoliberal agenda (Rose, 1999).
Looking across Rogers client-centered therapy,
Perls Gestalt therapy, Bernes transactional
analysis, Janovs primal therapy, Ellis rational
emotive therapy, cognitive behavior therapy,
Erhard Seminars Training (EST), and T-groups,
among others, what is consistent are moral injunctions to work on the self to attain greater
autonomy, to accept responsibility for ones
choices and circumstances, to strive to realize
ones potential, and to increase ones quality of
life.
Such precepts still are common among current psychotherapies. But what is new is that
they have become incorporated as aspects of a
broad psychological initiative that reenvisions
and promotes happiness in ways consistent with
neoliberal governmentality. The pursuit of individual happiness has been defended as a sociopolitical right and moral good at least since
Lockes Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1693, and it remains a right
and orientation to the good life in contemporary
neoliberal states. However, it is being given a
distinctively entrepreneurial twist.

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NEOLIBERALISM

In Happiness as Enterprise: An Essay on

Neoliberal Life, Binkley (2013) marshals arguments and evidence to show how happiness is
being recast by neoliberalism as an entrepreneurial project. In Binkleys analysis, the notion
of happiness as enterprise (p. 3) translates the
neoliberal approach to organizational structures
and functions in terms of individual well-being.
In other words, the road to personal fulllment
is paved with the same stones as those leading
to success for businesses and other institutions,
namely, becoming more independent and selfsufcient, enterprising, competitive, exible,
adaptable, risk-seeking, less reliant on government support, and oriented toward pursuing
self-interest in a society reconceived in the image of a market.
In what Binkley (2013) dubs the new discourse on happiness, individuals not only are
encouraged to cultivate their attributes, assets,
potentials, and purposes for the sake of their
personal success, but also to exploit happiness
itself as an attribute, asset, potential, and purpose that can be harnessed in aid of such success. In this way, happiness becomes both goal
and means. It is an effect of success, yet also a
resource for further success, occasioned by life
interpreted as an endless array of emerging opportunities and resources, including ones own
emotional states, to be engaged, deployed, and
even risked toward the overarching goal of
making oneself as competitive and effective as
possible. Happiness, as ends and means, is the
property of an autonomous agent who regards
the world not as dened by social norms and
responsibilities to which one must adjust, but
rather, as a store of resources to be used in the
service of self-optimization. The new discourse
on happiness reects a fundamental transformation in how we see life and our relation to it,
from the social and mutual to the entrepreneurial and opportunistic. As Binkley describes,
the new discourse on happiness, is not a state of being
nor a relation sustained responsibly with others, but a
life resource whose potential resides at the disposal of
a sovereign, enterprising, self-interested actor.
Through the lens of this new discourse, life is viewed
as a dynamic eld of potentials and opportunities, and
happiness is presented both as a goal and a monetary
instrument, realized through a strategic program of
emotional well-being. In other words, the new discourse on happiness proposes a certain transformation
in ones relation to the world and to oneself: as one
incorporates the new program into ones outlook, one

109

abandons the world of static states and stable ontologies for one of dynamic possibilities, risks and open
horizons. (p. 1)

Following Foucault, Binkley asserts that key

to implementing the technique of neoliberal
governmentality is the invention of forms of
discourse that can be used by individuals to
examine their conduct, assess their attitudes and
potentials, and shape their subjectivities through
language that ascribes and emphasizes capacities to exercise their self-responsible freedom
and autonomy. However, what also is an important feature of this discourse, Binkley observes,
is that we are told to rid ourselves of inherited
interdependencies resulting from excessive welfarist social policies of a previous governmentality. These policies, it is alleged, cause complaisance, if not docility, and stie our natural
impulses for autonomy, initiative, opportunistic
pursuit, and entrepreneurship. In the new discourse on happiness, we are enjoined to extricate ourselves from a legacy of interdependencies and the misbegotten beliefs that perpetuate
them: the importance of mutual commitments,
social cohesion, and collective responsibility,
preoccupation with the judgments of others, and
an overdependence on habits acquired by conforming to conventional patterns of social interaction and communal life.
According to Binkley (2013), much of what
is propelling the new discourse on happiness is
the positive psychology movement. Binkley details how positive psychologists have taken a
vital role in shaping this new understanding of
happiness and purveying it to the public. The
positive psychology movement originated in the
1990s, under the leadership of Martin Seligman,
a former president of the American Psychological Association. Positive psychologists distinguish themselves from their predecessors by
emphasizing sources of health, optimal performance, and human ourishing, rather than what
traditionally has been psychologists preoccupation with disease and disorder (Seligman &
Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Central to the mission
of positive psychology is to mobilize the theory,
methods, precision, and rigor that psychological
science has devoted to the study of dysfunction
and pathology, and redirect it to psychological
states and processes responsible for accomplishment, fulllment, and happiness. In this
regard, positive psychologists distance them-

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SUGARMAN

selves from other self-help advocates by proclaiming a solid scientic basis to their approach. Positive psychology, as dened in its
manifesto is: the scientic study of optimal
human functioning (Sheldon, Frederickson,
Rathunde, Csikszentmihalyi, & Haidt, 2000).
Over the past decade, positive psychology
has spawned a plethora of studies and articles,
many occurring in prominent psychological
journals (e.g., American Psychologist, Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Bulletin) as well as specialized outlets
(e.g., The Journal of Happiness Studies), a spate
of academic and popular books (e.g., Linley,
Harrington, & Garcea, 2013; Lyubomirsky,
2007; Seligman, 2000; Sheldon, Kashdan, &
Steger, 2011), magazine features (e.g., Time
magazines 2005 cover story), an array of technical manuals, and myriad Internet articles,
blogs, and dedicated sites. There are associations and conferences dedicated to positive psychology, university programs including those at
Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania,
and two Templeton Prizes. Positive psychology
is a multibillion dollar eld of research commanding enormous attention both within and
outside of psychology. The reach of its inuence extends far beyond counseling and psychotherapy to education, economic analyses,
business, management, marketing, sports
coaching, law enforcement, corrections, and
military training.
According to Binkley (2013), positive psychology owes to the humanistic tradition initiated by those such as Rogers and Maslow in
afrming internal forces and potentials residing
within individuals that enable them to conquer
negative self-assessments and emotions, and dene and pursue their own visions of selfrealization and fulllment. In this vein, positive
psychologists conceptualize happiness as a personal potential that is cultivated by producing
and managing thoughts that bring about positive
emotions. However, positive psychology also
borrows from cognitive psychology in the assumption that feelings follow thoughts, and
thoughts can be used purposefully and willfully
to command emotional states. A fundamental
premise of positive psychology is that by orienting ones thinking positively toward ones
circumstances, negative patterns of thought and
feeling can be circumvented or replaced.

However, positive psychology not only aims

to promote happiness in our experience and
enactment of the everyday, but moreover, at the
achievement of our full potential for happiness
as individuals, what Seligman (2000) refers to
as authentic happiness. Authentic happiness
results from recognizing and activating unique
potentials that come in the form of an individuals specic prole of core virtues and character strengths universally positive human characteristicsthat Seligman claims are found in
common across the worlds major spiritual and
philosophic traditions. Practicing ones virtues
and character strengths builds positive selfregard, seen as key to acquiring happiness.
In the light of positive psychology, Binkley
(2013) discerns, happiness is a product of individual effort. Only through your own actions
can you make yourself happy. The valence of
emotions directly reects optimistic and pessimistic thoughts. Thoughts are within ones control and purposefully can be manipulated to
effect desired emotional states. Consequently,
not only are individuals capable of changing
their emotions, but also, they ultimately are
responsible for their emotional experience. According to positive psychologists, when we accept responsibility for how we feel and learn to
wield our thoughts in the service of bettering
our lives, positive emotions and happiness result. It is this exercise of agency forged by a
sense of self-responsible freedom that is the
substance of happiness. By the same token, we
are to blame for our unhappiness. If we are
unhappy, it is because we have failed to accept
responsibility for our circumstances and take
action. Abdicating responsibility for our state of
being and inaction derive from succumbing to
pessimism bred from docility, resignation, dependency, and believing falsely that our futures
are determined by traumas and other psychological injuries sustained in our pasts.
Positive psychology is radically transforming
the nature of therapy and the goals of intervention. As Binkley (2013) discusses, psychotherapies styled on deep exploration of past relationships and reection on the suffering
incurred are being displaced by life coaching,
which not only eschews reective examination
of individuals histories, but also, the very assumption that clients need healing. The task of
the life coach is assisting clients in building
visions of their future happiness, setting self-

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NEOLIBERALISM

enterprising life goals, strategizing about available means, and motivating them to act in ways
to achieve their purposes. Using a mixture of
techniques adopted from counseling, business
consulting, and the human potential movement, coaching is eclectic, pragmatic, forward-looking, results oriented, and aimed at
efcient and productive living. It typically
consists of short-term, focused consultations
that address highly circumscribed personal
issues and challenges most often related to
career and business concerns. Such concerns
most often can be traced to the highly competitive climate of life in a neoliberal global
economy. However, in the paradigm of
coaching, such concerns become private individual shortcomings to be remedied by
strengthening individuals psychological resources.
Coaching is exempt from conventional licensing and professional requirements, which
according to Binkley (2013) is a freedom won
largely by being set in opposition to the dominant model of psychological expertise. Coaches
not only have little interest in their clients
pasts, and are present, future, and action oriented, but also, their expertise and authority is
formulated very differently from mainstream
psychotherapists. Coaching is nonhierarchical,
anti-institutional, and shows a preference for
credentials earned from practical experience
over academic degrees. The coach client relationship is characterized as informal and collegial, with sessions frequently conducted by teleconferencing. Coaches work as lifestyle
technicians, often employing technical means
by which clients progress is monitored, measured, charted, and compared against benchmarks of efciency and productivity. Tracing
the well-established link between coaching and
positive psychology, Binkley reveals how positive psychology lends coaching scientic legitimacy, while positive psychology benets from
coaching through increased dissemination of its
psychological platform.
However, what is perhaps most disconcerting
in Binkleys (2013) analysis is the way in which
positive psychology and coaching are reformulating our understanding of relationships in the
context of enterprise culture. The idea that happiness emerges from the depth of our moral
concerns and commitments, and the intertwining of our emotional lives with others in the

111

bonds of long-term intimate relationships, is

being eroded. In its place, positive psychology
and relationship coaching offer a highly instrumental orientation to relationships whereby
they become opportunities or life strategies that
require xed goals and, importantly, preservation of ones independence and autonomy. Binkley submits that under the inuence of positive
psychology and coaching, relationships are reduced to means-ends calculations, and pursued
solely for self-interest and emotional selfoptimization. Acts of love, friendship, benevolence, and generosity are valued to the extent
they increase individuals social capital. Even
our most intimate relationships are interpreted
as assets and liabilities, and in the competitive
social market where exibility and mobility are
prized, are best engaged as short-term contracts.
Flexible capitalism demands a high degree of
mobility and a willingness to exit relationships
that are no longer protable. The context of
neoliberalism seems to dissolve the capacity to
respect and cherish others, especially with the
kind of loyalty and commitment that Sennett
(1998) insists is disappearing from the list of
human virtues.
What becomes clear from Binkleys account
is that the new discourse on happiness delivered
by positive psychology strongly reects and
sustains neoliberalism and enterprise culture.
As Binkley summarizes:
[It] facilitates the conversion of a logic of economic
policy into one of personal, emotional and corporeal
practice. The vitality, optimism, and positive emotion that happiness inspires in us is none other than
the refraction of enterprise as enshrined in neoliberal
discourse, brought to bear against the vestiges of social
government that we carry within ourselves. The disposition to opportunistically pursue the happy life is a
reection of neoliberalisms invocation to selfinterested, competitive conduct. (p. 163)

Neoliberalism and Educational Psychology

In The Education of Selves: How Psychology
Transformed Students, Martin and McLellan
(2013) illuminate how, over the latter half of the
20th century, psychological expertise served in
shifting the goals of education from traditional
functions of preparing citizens to concern with
the psychological needs of individual learners.
By the late 1970s, educational psychologists
had declared that by enhancing self-esteem,
self-concept, self-regulation, and self-efcacy,

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112

SUGARMAN

students could acquire the psychological capabilities required to become enterprising, lifelong
learners. According to Martin and McLellan,
the psychologized image of the successful student has three key features. First, students act
and experience in ways that are expressive of
their presumed uniquely individual psychological interiors. Second, they are strategically enterprising in pursuit of self-dened goals. Third,
these features of self-expression and selfenterprise are entitlements; that is, basic rights
students can presume and demand from teachers, school administrators, and peers. Through
the lens of educational psychology, the expressive, enterprising, and entitled student is a
unique individual who is active, self-disciplined, self-directed, and self-assured; who
bears responsibility for her learning; and who is
equipped with executive skills and strategic
tools for goal-setting, progress monitoring, performance evaluation, and problem solving.
Martin and McLellan assert that these characteristics align with a very specic form of selfgovernance, one especially well suited to the
governmentality required of neoliberalism and
enterprise culture.
In detailing the historical inuence of educational psychologists on views of learners and
curricula, Martin and McLellan (2013) show
how the idea of expressive, enterprising selves
became linked to the terminology, technologies
of assessment and intervention, and authority of
psychological expertise. Under psychologys
inuence, children increasingly became understood as autonomous individual learners who
needed to be taught to recognize, value, express,
and direct their efforts toward developing, their
unique perspectives and abilities. This was promoted by educational psychologists under the
banners of self-esteem and self-concept,
whereas the terminology of self-regulation and
self-efcacy were used to conceptualize and
elevate the selfs hypothesized capacities as a
rational and strategic manager able to monitor,
strategize, reinforce, and motivate itself in pursuit of its own self-interests. According to Martin and McLellan (2013), the voluminous literature of psychological theorizing and research
on these dimensions of the self converge in a
conception of the successful enterprising student who is, in psychological terms, selfmotivated, self-regulated, and self-adapting (p.
174). Enterprising students are individuals who

come to possess specialized executive skills and

strategies adapted instrumentally for optimal
performance in academic and life tasks. Perhaps
most centrally, enterprising students develop a
view of lifelong learning as an essential tool for
remaining competitive in the perpetually changing world of exible capitalism.
What is now explicitly referred to as enterprise education or 21st century learning, and
has been incorporated extensively in many Canadian and American school policies and practices, relies on a psychologized conception of
the learner of the sort Martin and McLellan
(2013) describe. Across the various programs in
support of these initiatives is a target set of core
competencies: critical thinking and problem
solving, creativity and innovation, adaptability,
lifelong learning, teamwork and collaboration,
initiative, self-direction, an entrepreneurial
spirit, communication skills, literacy, and use of
technology (p. 173). In support of this aim,
curricula encourage and provide opportunities
to practice risk-taking, team building, condence, and reection.
Strongly aligned with these initiatives, The
British Columbia Ministry of Education states
that the kinds of people it seeks to produce
[possess] management and organizational skills, show
initiative, responsibility, exibility and adaptability,
self-esteem and condence, believe actions and
choices affect what happens in life, make effort to
reach personal potential by pursuing what [they] enjoy
doing, market [their] skills and abilities in the same
way as [they] would a business. (British Columbia
Ministry of Education, 2008, Career Planning 10, p. 9)

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador advertises, the emphasis of Enterprise

Education at the elementary level is on rening
personal development skills and enterprise
management skills (G.N.L.D.E., 2010a, p. 48).
In aid of developing these skills, students are
provided opportunities to acquire enterprising
skills in both individual and group learning activities. Some activities focus on developing a
positive self image. Others are problem-solving
which require students to be enterprising and
self-sufcient (G.N.L.D.E., 2010b, p. 1) along
with risk-taking, team-building, and skills associated with review and reection. Likewise, in
Nova Scotia,
During the elementary school years, entrepreneurship
education emphasizes the development of personal
qualities, characteristics, attitudes, and skills and pro-

NEOLIBERALISM

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vides diverse opportunities for students to explore and

experiment with entrepreneurship and enterprise.
Learners are encouraged to initiate and develop their
own solutions to problems and to see possibilities for
entrepreneurship and enterprise in their communities.
(Nova Scotia Department of Education, 2003, p. H-1)

What these curricular goals and their implementation demonstrate is that when psychological expertise is brought to bear in the setting of
educational values, aims, and practices, it becomes inuential in the constitution of students
as particular kinds of persons.
As Martin and McLellan (2013) recognize,
the challenge of neoliberal governmentality is
to determine ways in which individuals who
value their freedom can be taught to exercise it
in a manner consistent with certain sociopolitical arrangements. Neoliberal governmentality
does not operate through the domination and
oppression of citizens, but rather, by making
their subjectivity a target of inuence. To this
end, educational psychology has been an able
ally of neoliberalism. By promoting particular
kinds of selfhood and techniques by which they
are developed and attained, educational psychologists have intervened in the operations and
purposes of schools to help produce forms of
subjectivity suitable to neoliberal governmentality. Fundamental to these kinds of selfhood is
the belief that we are self-contained, autonomous beings who are masters of our abilities,
efforts, goals, choices, and accomplishments,
and capable of functioning largely independent
of social and cultural surrounds. By designing
and instituting educational practices and interventions that teach us to manage ourselves and
act in ways betting the neoliberal conception
of ourselves as autonomous enterprising actors,
educational psychologists are partners in preserving the neoliberal status quo.
Martin and McLellan (2013) assert that a
consequence of the kinds of selfhood promoted
by educational psychology is that they deter us
from recognizing and acknowledging our social, cultural, and historical constitution. This is
problematic, Martin and McLellan point out,
because it is only by virtue of our participation
with others within ways of life saturated with
moral and ethical values and standards that we
judge ourselves and our actions as justly deserving of praise or blame. Thus, Martin and McLellan remind us, psychological advice to esteem,
express, or regulate ourselves in aid of accom-

113

plishing our purposes only is intelligible because we comprehend ourselves as persons

against a background of social and cultural criteria and conventions by which our actions are
sanctioned or censured. Further, as long as we
are focused on ourselves, our desires, ends, and
pursuits are detached from collective concerns,
and the sociopolitical status quo goes largely
unexamined and unquestioned. We are diverted
from taking up collective social and political
concerns and democratic practices as citizens
engaged with others.
Moreover, Martin and McLellan (2013) tell
us, in the absence of a strong orientation to our
sociocultural and political contexts and those
with whom we inhabit them, the kinds of selves
advocated by educational psychology possess
little educational substance or value. As Martin
and McLellan make clear, any adequate vision
of democratic education needs to entail the formation of persons who can engage the complexities of contemporary life with a well informed
and critical appreciation of the social and cultural practices of knowing and understanding
bequeathed us by history and the ways we depend on and are situated within them. A major
objective of schooling in democratic societies is
assisting students to place their experiences,
beliefs, and attitudes in a larger horizon and in
contrast to perspectives and ways of life that are
different and even quite remote from their own.
Vital to democratic education is the genuine
effort to comprehend ones place in the world
and human history, and to learn to appreciate
and value the very best of what humankind has
produced in its endeavors. It is in these ways
that education equips us for both individual and
collective empowerment and enhancement in
ways that build constructively on the successes
and failures of the past and present. Martin and
McLellan argue that a narrow focus on ones
inner psychological life and overly simplied,
facile strategies for managing it are thin gruel
for the educational nourishment of citizens capable of engaging intelligently and sensitively
with others in matters of sociocultural and political signicance.
Martin and McLellan (2013) conclude that
the expressive, enterprising, and entitled learner
advanced by educational psychology, and incorporated by many American, Canadian, and European school policies and practices, is ill suited
to the purposes of education. Whereas educa-

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114

SUGARMAN

tional psychology is focused on enhancing the

interior experience, self-governing capacities,
self-concern, and self-serving instrumental expression of individuals, education has the
broader mandate of preparing citizens capable
not only of developing themselves, but also, of
contributing to their communities for the collective good. Martin and McLellan worry that educational aims concerned with the values of
committed citizenship, civic virtue, and the
greater collective good have been supplanted by
the mission of educational psychologists to help
learners acquire skills, abilities, and dispositions that make them adaptive workers
equipped psychologically to meet the everchanging demands of neoliberal exible capitalism.
Discussion and Conclusion
Neoliberalism began as a set of monetary and
scal policies in response to the economic turmoil of the 1970s. Multinational corporations,
whose prots were threatened by soaring ination and the growing power of labor in developed nations, together with international nancial institutions, such as the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, abetted a seismic
shift in governmental policy from interventionism to the liberalization of trade, nancial transactions, business, and industry (Newton, 2004). Neoliberal economic policies have
had dramatic global consequences. However,
neoliberalism is no longer just a set of economic
policies. It has disseminated and imposed market values at every corner of human life. At the
hub of these values are entrepreneurialism and
market rationality. By institutionalizing these
values, neoliberalism has had not only normative consequences, but also, ontological ones,
extending to the very psychological constitution
of persons.
Societies require people to do and be certain kinds of things and are structured sociopolitically to produce persons, selves, and
contexts that elicit and regulate actions of
these kinds. Neoliberal governmentality requires individuals who are responsible for
themselves and reexively manage their
skills, abilities, and relationships such that
they can be deployed as marketable assets.
Neoliberalism succeeds in producing such individuals and the prescribed economic activ-

ity through the extension of market conditions

to every aspect of human endeavor. Market
rationality congures human life as enterprise. Individuals are made responsible to provide for their own needs, aspirations, and happiness. To do so under market conditions, they
are encouraged to conceive of themselves as
autonomous entrepreneurial actors who must
steer themselves strategically through a competitive eld of opportunities, alliances, and obstacles. As evidence of the ubiquity of market
rationality applied to everyday life, witness how
it is blatantly displayed as the common plot of a
hoard of reality TV shows proliferating globally
(Couldry, 2008).
In the examples I have discussed, the features
and effects of neoliberal governmentality are
being sustained and perpetuated by many psychological theories and practices. A common
thread across these features and effects is what
Brown terms self-care. According to Brown
(2003), by making individuals fully responsible
for themselves and accentuating capacities for
this self-care, neoliberalism conates economic and moral behavior, reconceiving morality in terms of rational deliberation over protability, costs, risks, and consequences. Moral
agency takes an economic form. In neoliberalism, the moral agent is the entrepreneurial subject. Moreover, under the guise of a morality of
self-care, neoliberalism takes self-reliance and
self-responsibility to extremes. The enterprising
individual shoulders full responsibility for his
or her circumstances regardless of the ways in
which his or her choices are constrained (e.g.,
lack or obsolescence of skills, limited access to
education or medical care, poverty, low wages,
high levels of unemployment). Brown contends
that by attributing individuals predicaments to
a mismanaged life, social and economic powers become depoliticized, concealed behind the
common sense of entrepreneurial individualism.
Brown (2003) notes another effect of the
neoliberal emphasis on self-care is that political
citizenship and civic virtue are greatly diminished. As Brown explains, the neoliberal individual, as an autonomous self-concerned strategist locked in competition with others, is
preoccupied with choosing for him- or herself.
He or she has little impetus to engage cooperatively with others to organize or revise the
options over which choice can be exercised,
especially for the collective good. The hyper

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NEOLIBERALISM

self-sufciency of neoliberalism denies and prevents social relatedness. Brown (2003) surmises
that the consummate neoliberal public could
hardly be said to exist as a public: The body
politic ceases to be a body, but is, rather, a
group of individual entrepreneurs and consumers (para. 15). In neoliberalism, the state does
not organize and control the market. Rather, it is
the converse. Market rationality is the regulative principle that organizes the state. Brown
goes on to argue that as a consequence, traditional democratic institutions are being dismembered as the values of enterprise, selfsufciency, cost-benet efciency, and
productivity ascend over the power of the state.
These and other features and effects of neoliberalism I have discussed bear profound implications for the interpretation of psychological
ethics.
In this article, I have drawn attention to neoliberalism and some of the ways psychology is
implicated in the neoliberal agenda. My aim has
been to broaden the context of consideration in
which psychological ethics might be examined
and more richly informed. A vital function of
governmentality is not only to produce and regulate forms of subjectivity, but also to legitimize the status quo regarding ordinary life and
what is deemed natural about it. Perhaps the
most powerful penetration of governmentality
is to be found in what passes for common sense.
This is why neoliberalism is so pervasive and, at
the same time, so difcult to detect.
In the examples I have discussed, there is
ample evidence that many psychologists are
operating in ways that sustain and promote the
globally dominant neoliberal agenda. In some
ways, this should not be surprising. Psychology
is wedded to the social, cultural, political, and
economic conditions of its times (Danziger,
1997). However, as some have long noted (e.g.,
Prilleltensky, 1994; Prilleltensky & WalshBowers, 1993), psychologists have been unwilling to admit their complicity with specic sociopolitical arrangements, for to do so would
undermine a credibility forged on value neutrality presumed to be ensured by scientic objectivity and moral indifference to its subject matter. Consequently, as the historical record
attests, in the main, psychologists have served
primarily as architects of adjustment in preserving the status quo and not as agents of
sociopolitical change (Walsh-Bowers, 2007).

115

However, if psychologists are to act ethically,

we cannot continue hiding behind a veneer of
scientism (Prilleltensky, 1994, p. 967). We are
compelled not only to admit that psychology is
ideologically laden, but also to ask ourselves
whether we are acting ethically in preserving
the neoliberal status quo. This entails interrogating neoliberalism, our relationship to it, how
it affects what persons are and might become,
and whether it is good for human well-being. It
is only by such examination that we might comprehend the ethics of our disciplinary and professional practices in the context of a neoliberal
political order and whether we are living up to
our social responsibility. I hope to have offered
a step in this direction.

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Received December 10, 2014
Revision received January 27, 2015
Accepted January 29, 2015